Hack Week Part 3 - Scoring a PR8 Link From Google
Okay, maybe this is more of an opportunity than a hack, but links from Page Rank 8 pages are hard to come by, and from Google itself nonetheless. But for Google Checkout merchants, you can get a link from the Google Checkout Merchants page, and no - Google doesn’t use nofollow or robots.txt to blog Page Rank from passing.
Now a general rule of thumb amongst SEOs when scoping out link opportunities is to find pages with less than 100 links. Obviously this page far more links than that. But don’t worry, here’s an explanation from Google’s Matt Cutts himself:
Matt’s exact words - The “keep the number of links to under 100″ is in the technical guideline section, not the quality guidelines section. That means we’re not going to remove a page if you have 101 or 102 links on the page. Think of this more as a rule of thumb. Originally, Google only indexed the first 100 kilobytes or so of web documents, so keeping the number of links under 100 was a good way to ensure that all those links would be seen by Google. These days I believe we index deeper within documents, so that’s less of an issue. But it is true that if users see 250 or 300 links on a page, that page is probably not as useful for them, so it’s a good idea to break a large list of links down (e.g. by category, topic, alphabetically, or chronologically) into multiple pages so that your links don’t overwhelm regular users.
Source: SEOmoz
I would imagine Google is going to crawl its own pages as far as they go. Yes, if you understand the Page Rank concept that “link juice” is divided among all the links on the page - the more links the less nectar you get. But Page Rank is exponential. 100 links on a Page Rank 8 page could pass more value than 50 links on a PR4. If I’m wrong here, please drop a comment.
It can only help you to get a link from this page. And it could send you good traffic from Google Checkout fanboys and girls as Google heavily promotes its payment service and continues to offer special deals — especially around the holidays (10% off purchase, for example).
Offering alternative payment options also accommodates shoppers who don’t want to provide credit card information to every merchant and prefer to give this information to one party, like Google Checkout, and complete transactions at many stores quickly.
You also get a bit of kickback on your Adwords fees when you participate with Google Checkout. And some report higher click throughs after adding Google Checkout because the icon that appears in PPC results attracts more attention, especially when you’re in lower positions. Jeremy comments at Search Engine Roundtable:
Just by adding the icons to the PPC ads, I did not see conversions rates go up, but still, increased traffic with the same conversion rates equals more sales.
Hey, notice the dynamic keyword insertion goof on the last result? Triple check your ads and display URLs before they go live…
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Linda,
Great post on GC. I love the extra benefits you get by using it, not to mention the extra promotion Google gives their Checkout users (OneBox results to GC stores, Adwords icon, Product Search icon, Merchants page, Providers page, etc.)
One thing that I disagree with is the value of the link from Google’s Checkout Merchants page. It used to be just as you stated, a page with outgoing links to merchants that passes link juice, however anyone who is listed on that page, other than the merchants with logos at the top, are not getting link love anymore from Google.
Notice the logo links dont have alt or title tags and there are ONclick JavaScript Analytics codes within them, but they do pass a little juice for those select merchants (probably BIG Adwords spenders, paid link?)
The rest of the links on that page are completely wrapped in JavaScript, not well liked by many of the crawlers. UNfortunatley, those links are worthless for link juice, however they are great for targeted traffic and clicks. More like a good referral link than a good PR passing link, in my opinion.
Here’s the code for all the text link merchants…
Browse additional stores
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Hi Matt, thanks for pointing that out. Good eye!
That’s funny, Jason and I were having this conversation yesterday that it probably doesn’t pass juice - I didn’t think of actually checking the links themselves in the HTML (whoops)
So technically the link is on a PR8 page, but you don’t get value unless you are the big merchant. Google reserves the right to sell its own Page Rank ;-)
I’m not sure of the exact requirements to get listed on the GCO page, but I think they’re pretty high. We tried doing it about a year ago, and they said it was reserved for certain partners, and they would get back to us if we qualify. Not exactly sure on what they means but I an educated guess would be something like businesses that process 6 figures + per month just through GCO.
Exactly!
There are other places they pass link juice. The ones I know of for merchants and related are Google Checkout Blog, Mini-pages, Adwords Success Stories (that one actually disallows all bots except the Googlebot), Checkout Successes, Analytics Partners and lastly there’s Adsense ones too.
I am sure there are more, those are just a few I know of.
@ Jestep - Certain Partners = BIG Adwords Spenders, plus certain transaction amounts through Checkout.
All you need to do is spend $10,000.00 or more in Adwords per month, not sure how much in GC transactions per month though (maybe 50-100k).
>100 links on a Page Rank 8 page could pass more value than 50 links on a PR4.
My understanding is that 100 links on a PR 8 would pass more juice than 50 links on a PR 7. To get a PR 8 you’ve got to get waaaaay more than double the juice than a PR 7.
Hmmmmm…The mystery that is Page Rank.
Throwing relevance into the mix, do you think that if you sell bike helmets that a link from a pr4 bike-related page on a bike related domain with 10 outgoing links to bike suppliers/accessories using keyword relevant anchor text is more valuable than a link from a pr8 shopping directory to 100+ unrelated e-stores?
A side note, we’re just in the middle of a PR toolbar update…
@Linda - if the pr4 bike related page appear in the top 1000 results for a given keyword phrase then yes I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Though, it is best to get both :)
Linda - I find that a topical, relevant, well anchored link is far more valuable than say a link from a general directory category with company name as anchor text and a general description.
Many factors including topical relevance of inbound links, topical anchor text of inbound links, topical body text surrounding inbounds, link popularity in topical communities and the topical relationship of the linking page are a taken into account.
Other linking factors not related to topical links include global domain link popularity, anchor text link, body text surrounding links and link popularity within a site’s internal structure.
All links are good (unless of course they are from FFA’s and banned sites or neighborhoods), but the topical ones go a lot further in the end than general site links from non-related pages using general or non-related anchor text.
For a small business website using Google Checkout the traffic from a listing in the merchant directory could increase sales tremendously. Pass the goodwill that’s worth more to some than passing pagerank.
Putting Google checkout on my website is in my top 10 list. I would like to get listed on the Google page with a PR of 9, but from the sound of the comments above. It would seem ‘fat chance’.
Of those that use Google checkout, how big of an improvement in sales? I already have PayPal.
Just wondering how quickly I should get this setup on my website?
Do you think the website need only traffic not PR? I think also the website should run towards targeted traffic not with PR.
Thanks
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